Compliments of the Season (1930) User Reviews

Depression Era Tale Of Desperation

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 28 December 2011]

Eric Dressler and Lenita Lane star in this Vitagraph short subject that Warner Brothers did it's an interesting and heart warming Christmas season film. It perfectly captures the era of The Great Depression and the desperate mood of the times.

Very simply Dressler is an ex-convict released recently from jail. He's a petty thief, not a violent type and probably got involved in the crooked life out of economic want. That was something Depression audiences could relate to and Warner Brothers was the studio that most related to that working class and on relief audience. Dressler saves Lane from committing suicide over a broken heart and in the end proves he has more worth than the law represented by policeman Pat O'Brien would give him credit for.

Compliments Of The Season marked the film debut of Pat O'Brien who later Warner Brothers would pick up as one of their premier stars of the Thirties. Pat shows his versatility here, usually he's a tough guy with a heart of gold, in this he's a flint heart and a cynic. His appearance is the main reason for seeing this film simply because he's the only name most will know.

Still this is not a short subject and it does mark the birth of Hollywood legend.

Christmas Is A Time For Friends

[boblipton · 6/10 · 2 December 2019]

Eric Dressler, just out of prison, is trying to go straight, but police detective Pat O'Brien -- looking very young for those of us who are used to us as one of Warner Brother's "Irish Mafia" stock company -- is hassling him.

Dressler stops Lenita Lane from throwing herself in the river. She's blue because she's alone, so he offers to have dinner with her... but he has no money. So he mugs a man hurrying home with Christmas gifts and takes his watch.

It winds up being a vaudeville skit, but it does so in a charming and Christmas-like manner. Dressler didn't have much of a movie career, though he worked in television and, I would imagine, on the stage; Miss Lane's movie career was mostly uncredited bits. O'Brien, of course, had a long and well-remembered career, almost a hundred features over the next 50 years.

Decent...but the sound is a major problem.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 15 December 2017]

Originally, "Compliments of the Season" must have sounded great. After all, the Vitaphone sound process was several years old and this branch of Warner Brothers made many, many sound shorts before this. However, when I saw this one on Turner Classic Movies, the sound was terrible...and it really could use subtitles to help the viewer watch it.

The story is about a guy who's an ex-con and hungry. A cop (Pat O'Brien) is rousting him...insisting he KNOWS the guy is going to screw up and return to prison. Well, the cop isn't all wrong as he IS planning on stealing...but a very odd thing happens that night. It seems while he's out and about to do wrong, he comes upon a suicidal lady and he ends up saving her life. What's next? See it for yourself.

Unlike many of the Vitaphone shorts, this one is like a mini-movie and not a musical number or vaudeville act. While it is well made, whether or not you see it really should depend on whether or not you think you can tolerate the lousy sound. Worth seeing but not a must-see.

Not a Masterpiece but Worth Watching

[Michael_Elliott · 25 December 2011]

Compliments of the Season (1930)

*** (out of 4)

This Vitaphone short has pretty much been forgotten over the years but it contains a few elements that make it worth viewing around the Christmas season. The film starts off as Jimmy 'Fingers' Dugan (Eric Dressler) is released from prison and he goes onto a roof top where he stops a woman (Lenita Lane) from killing herself. Wanting to take the woman to dinner, he decides to steal a watch from a man and soon he might wind up back in jail. This isn't a very well-known short, which is a shame since it has a few good Christmas-time elements that would appeal to quite a few people around this time of the year. I think this short is poorly made and there are some questionable plot holes in the film and not to mention that the ending is just downright silly but I still managed to be entertained by it. I think the biggest reason is that Dressler is so good in his part that you enjoy watching him with the girl as he tries to get her to forget this guy that she's in love with but can't find. He's also good when he's mixing it up with a man dressed up as Santa collecting money and even better is his jabs with a police detective who has been following him. Pat O'Brien, in his first role, plays the detective and it's interesting to see how Warner was using him here. A lot of times major stars would get their feet wet in shorts like this just to see what works and what doesn't. O'Brien would go onto appear in countless roles as the good guy but he proves he could play bad if needed to. COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON is far from a classic but it's an entertaining little film that has some nice pre-code elements and the performances push it over the top.

Sound alone is not enough

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 25 December 2018]

"Compliments of the Season" is an American English-language black-and-white short film from 1930, so this one is really at almost 90 years of age now among the very oldest sound films, especially with a running-time of over 10 minutes, and you can certainly hear it. Director is Arthur Hurley and his cast here isn't too big. At the center of the action we have Eric Dressler playing a small time crook and Lenita Lane playing a woman about to commit cuicide who gets saved by the crook. Okay that went more easily than expected for sure, which certainly took out a bit of dramatic quality. Also it does not feel right that some detective really has the time and dedication to keep following a minor criminal the day he gets released. Today this would be called stalking, back then it seemed like a legally justifiable act in favor of society. Anyway, this film also advertizes itself with the Christmas message it is sending out, but honestly this one really did not impress me at all and it feels rushed in and Christmasy for the sake of being Christmasy if you want to say so. Know what I mean? this description fits many other films as well. So yeah sadly neither the plot, nor the performances, but especially not the former ever reach a level where I thought this was a genuinely interesting, touching or memorable short movie. Sot the quality for a positive recommendation for me here is certainly not there. Quite a pity. They were travelling new territory here, sound film namely, and while they did fine in that field, the story and everything around it certainly could have needed much better attention to detail that they seemingly could have forgotten about here. My suggestion is to watch something else instead, even if you like very old b&w films.

Merry Christmas you mugs!

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 27 December 2012]

This very early sound short is a Christmas story with a very distinct Warner Brothers cops and robbers feel to it. Jimmy "Fingers" Dugan, a petty thief and robber, stops a young woman from jumping off the pier to her death on Christmas Eve. After he talks to her he finds out she is destitute and she is also forlorn because she cannot find the man she loves - he has moved and she is alone on Christmas Eve. When Jimmy finds out she is hungry he decides to commit armed robbery to get the money to feed her. Odd how he would be so kind to one stranger and terrorize another. But a local beat cop has been keeping a close eye on Jimmy. How will all of this turn out? Watch and find out.

The big Christmas present for the viewer is Pat O'Brien in his first film appearance as the cop - an uncredited appearance at that. The two credited leads, Eric Dressler as Jimmy the thief and Lenita Lane as the lonely woman, never really made it in films, although they do a splendid job here. Eric Dressler made only one other appearance - in a short entitled "Envy" - and disappeared from film for 23 years. Lenita Lane worked until the early 1950's, but always in uncredited appearances or very small roles.

The short is very inspirational, with a great message about life's possibilities that seem much more likely at Christmas, but what a big deal it would be to watch today if Jimmy the thief had been played by James Cagney and the forlorn woman by Joan Blondell. They had both just arrived at Warner Brothers - it could have happened.

heart-touching, melodramatic, early-sound Christmas short

[django-1 · 9/10 · 20 December 2004]

This 1930 Vitaphone short is the kind of sentimental, melodramatic Depression-era Christmas story we just don't see anymore. From the beginning of the sound era, the simple 15 minute short tells the story of a man released from prison, wandering the streets looking for work and only finding a day or two here and there. He's got a heart of gold, but he's still the lovable pickpocket he's always been--he just needs a break. He sees a young lady about to kill herself by jumping off the pier, so he saves her, the police and a stolen watch provide further complications, and the Christmas spirit manages to brighten the hearts and lives of the four characters involved. How rare it is to see an ex-prisoner or someone living on the street depicted positively in a film nowadays. In 1930, such people were considered unlucky souls who had a few bad breaks but who could be your own brother or sister...or YOU. How social attitudes have changed (as shown by the 2004 election results!)!! Eric Dressler, an actor unfamiliar to me, does a wonderful job, like George Raft doing a scene written by Damon Runyon! Lenita Lane, as the lady about to take her own life, communicates the tragic situation well. Lane had a number of supporting roles in the 30s, and was even unbilled in some small walk-on parts. She was still working in 1959, when she appeared in THE BAT with Vincent Price. The other two actors, who are unbilled, are instantly recognizable. Weldon Heyburn (sometimes called "the poor man's Clark Gable" and veteran of many great b-movies) is the long-lost boyfriend of the girl, and Pat O'Brien is the cop who tails Dressler and keeps on his case, screwing up his chances of getting an honest job. The direction is simple, relying on the drama of the situation and the power of the actors to carry things along. Santa even makes an appearance, and of course he is a depression-era Warner Brothers Santa, the kind who could have walked off the pages of a James T. Farrell novel! Overall, a wonderfully sentimental and naturalistic piece that, for me, captures the REAL meaning of the holidays. We need more films of this type today.

Many of the critiques available here . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 8/10 · 17 December 2019]

. . . claim that classic Warner flicks usually (if not always) were intended to warn viewers about problems facing America then and now. COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON would seem to bear this theory out. As prescient Man-about-the-Town New Yorker "Jimmy" observes to a local peacekeeper (or vice versa), "You've got about as much of a chance of going straight as a woman driving a car on Sunday." When COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON was first released, many states were in the process of tacking on the Right to Drive Automobiles to Women's Suffrage. As both Jimmy and the copper feared, weak-minded naïve conformists soon succumbed in Real Life to the faulty call for making apples and oranges synonymous by way of a false analogy. It wasn't long before America's wayward convoy of "Daisy Buchanan's" were mowing down legions of "Myrtle Wilson's" along the USA's highways. This doomed even the Greatest of Gatsby's in a debacle persisting right into our Modern 21st Century. Rubbing in salt to injury, Jimmy soon gets saddled with a suicidal flopsy-mopsy chick of questionable personal hygiene. As he observes, "What's the matter--don't they got no bathtubs where you're from?" COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON indeed!